Programmable gate arrays may be used for many hardware tasks. A field programmable gate array—or FPGA—has become recently popular, and may be used for the front end input to digital signal processing (DSP) applications. The FPGA device may directly impact the performance of the DSP. For example, dedicated multipliers may be used to increase and improve the DSP performance. Better and more precise multipliers may be used for sophisticated DSP kernels such as finite impulse response filters, e.g., filters with hundreds of taps.
Increases in electronic performance have provided more DSP processing power for each new generation of FPGA. However, there is a trade-off of power consumption. The trends have resulted in exponentially-increasing maximum power per device for new generations of FPGAs. This has led to power being considered as an important design parameter in the FPGA. Power consumption may be especially critical for power critical applications including space-based applications, handheld device, and remotely-positioned sensors. Power consumption is not reflected in conventional FPGA tools.